The NCAA president embraced common sense, so what's the catch?

For decades, the NCAA has effectively served two purposes: stage tournaments and keep college athletes from making money. That’s what made NCAA president Charlie Baker’s letter so shocking. All of a sudden, the leader of the governing body of college sports had done a complete about-face.

Even as it bent to the will of state governments and the courts and allowed name, image and likeness payments, the NCAA still worked to enforce rules that would keep athletes from making money. Even after it got skunked in the Supreme Court — which opened the floodgates for further antitrust action — college sports’ governing body dug in its heels, issued memos that it intended to enforce rules that seemed unenforceable and kept arguing in ongoing court cases that schools paying athletes would lead to the destruction of the enterprise.

Baker’s letter, obtained Tuesday by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports, suggests the schools that run the NCAA abandon the tactics that have failed to keep pace with the times and chart a new path. It contains perhaps the most common sense ever committed to a document that pass through NCAA headquarters.

So naturally everyone — from administrators to coaches to athletes — is looking for the catch.

It might just be that Baker, the former Massachusetts governor who was hired to try to lobby Congress for a bill that would absolve the leaders of college sports from fixing a mess they created themselves, realizes that Congress isn’t coming to the rescue to save a status quo that is already a memory. It might be that he’s trying to give the schools that bring in most of the money a reason to keep the NCAA as their governing body.

That’s probably why he suggested a new subdivision that looks an awful lot like a Superleague.

Baker encourages schools to start a conversation about  a new FBS subdivision that looks an awful lot like the membership of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC circa 2024. That subdivision would allow schools to make NIL deals directly with athletes, which is expressly forbidden now. Allowing such deals might alleviate the side effect of athletic directors and coaches bifurcating their fundraising. Now, the AD and the coach ask donors to give to the athletic department to fund coaches salaries, administrative costs and capital projects. Then they beg those same donors to give to (separate-but-not-really) collectives that in turn pay the players through NIL deals.

Also, it could cause athletic departments to distribute money differently. Why commit to a $95 million guaranteed contract for a coach such as Jimbo Fisher when the $76 million used to buy out Fisher might buy much better players for a different coach? Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh has advocated for revenue sharing with athletes. This would allow that without classifying them as employees. (Though the government may still do that anyway. This proposal might be 10 years too late to stop that.)

But this subdivision would have a hefty buy-in. Baker’s letter proposes an investment into a trust of at least $30,000 per year per athlete for at least half of each school’s athletes provided the payments complied with Title IX. Note the phrase “at least.” Schools could pay more than $30,000 athlete per year. They could pay 100 percent of their athletes if they wished. And the NIL deals could ensure that athletes who are worth more than their counterparts — think Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe or Iowa basketball guard Caitlin Clark — make what they’re worth. 

Most NCAA rules either forbid or cap certain actions. This would set a floor rather a ceiling, and that’s a massive departure from decades of collusion by the schools to keep the athletes from getting a bigger piece of the money.

The members of that new subdivision could then make their own rules regarding scholarship limits, coaching staff sizes and anything else that they could afford to do that their other Division I and FBS colleagues could not. 

But here’s the part where this looks like a Hail Mary to save the NCAA and keep that group from simply defecting and creating its own governing body: Members of the new subdivision could still play other Division I teams in football. This would allow dollars to flow down, and it would allow the Indianas and Vanderbilts to schedule much-needed football wins. More important: Members of Division I would all still take part in the NCAA basketball tournament.

The men’s tournament essentially funds the NCAA. The ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC could break off and stage their own tournament. It would make significant money, but it wouldn’t make as much as March Madness. Part of the magic formula is the possibility that UMBC might beat Virginia or St. Peter’s might beat Kentucky. Northwestern beating North Carolina would indeed be an upset, but it wouldn’t capture the imagination the way Northern Iowa over Kansas does.

But the problem for the NCAA is that even though a Superleague tourney probably wouldn’t command a $1 billion a year rights fee like March Madness does, not having to share with everyone else in Division I probably means the members of conferences would make as much or more than they do now from the tourney. Even though football drives most of the money and most of the decision-making processes at the schools, the key to the survival of the NCAA as THE governing body of college sports is a united Division I basketball tournament.  

So maybe that’s the catch. Baker is trying to save the NCAA as the NCAA knows itself.

Or perhaps this is a way to slow the lawsuits once the NCAA settles the newest big one. One of the most significant moves in college sports history came on a Friday night a month ago. While most college sports fans were worried about the LSU-Alabama or Oklahoma-Oklahoma State games the next day, federal judge Claudia Wilken certified a class in House v. NCAA that essentially put the NCAA on the hook for billions in damages for former athletes who could claim that the schools colluded through the NCAA to deny them the right to make NIL deals. 

Or maybe major concessions to the athletes might stop the march toward employment status. If players truly could make deals with the schools that reflect their market value as athletes — rather than only trust payments that are equal for every player — then it might be a more lucrative arrangement for athletes than an employment scenario with a collectively bargained salary structure. But it may be too late for that.

No matter the reason, Baker shocked everyone with the letter. That includes the people who work in college sports.

The contents of Baker’s letter weren’t floated by many of the people who run college athletic departments before they went public. The response was surprise and a series of questions about what the letter’s ultimate motive might be. The NCAA’s previous strategies, especially the ones in the courtroom, created and/or accelerated much of the dysfunction. And now the NCAA president wants to go in the complete opposite direction?

Given all that’s happened, mistrust is to be expected. But will this suggestion create a new way forward for the NCAA or a world without the NCAA?